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University of Copenhagen Chapter 10: Germanic Hansen, Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard; Kroonen, Guus Published in: The Indo-European languages Publication date: 2021 Document version Peer reviewed version Citation for published version (APA): Hansen, B. S. S., & Kroonen, G. (Accepted/In press). Chapter 10: Germanic. In T. Olander (Ed.), The Indo- European languages: New perspectives on a language family Cambridge University Press. Download date: 26. sep.. 2021 9. Germanic Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen University of Copenhagen Guus Kroonen Leiden University & University of Copenhagen 1 Introduction Germanic languages are spoken by about 500 million native speakers. It is a medium- large subgroup of the Indo-European language family and owes much of its current distribution to the relatively recent expansion of English. From a historical perspective, notable old Germanic languages were Gothic, Old Norse, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old Franconian (poorly attested) and Old High German (Bousquette & Salmons 2017: 387–8). Gothic, mainly known from a 4th- century bible translation, continued to be spoken in a local variant in Crimea until the late 18th century but subsequently went extinct (Nielsen 1981: 283–8). The continu- ants of Old Saxon survive marginally in largely moribund pockets of Low German Platt. The Frisian languages are still spoken in northern Germany and the Dutch prov- ince of Fryslân, but the use of these languages is in decline (Versloot 2020). English and German are the largest Germanic languages by numbers of speakers; third comes Dutch, which has descended from Low Franconian. The Nordic languages (Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Elfdalian, Gutnish and Danish), which have descended from different varieties of Old Norse, cover the most extensive territory within Europe (Henriksen & van der Auwera 1994). Even prior to the appearance of these languages in the region from the 4th to the 12th century, we have attestations of Germanic languages in the region. Runic inscrip- tions in a language that we may label Early Runic1 appear in mainly northern Germany, Denmark and southern Sweden from the 2nd century onwards, and even before that, we have one inscription on a 4th-century-BCE bronze helmet, the Negau B helmet, unearthed in Slovenia. This inscription, which is in a northern Etruscan alphabet and reads hariχastiteiwa, constitutes our earliest evidence of Germanic, at least if we fol- low Markey (2001) in interpreting it as ‘Harigast the priest’ with harigast to be iden- tified as the Germanic words for ‘army’ and ‘guest’ and teiwa as a linguistic precursor 1 This language probably represents some stage of Primitive Germanic with minor dialectal differences, i.e., an umbrella term for Proto-Norse, the language of the early Anglo-Frisian runic inscriptions, the early continental runic inscriptions and the few so-called East Ger- manic runic inscriptions from southeastern Europe. 2 Guus Kroonen & Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen of the Nordic theonym Týr.2 This inscription thus constitutes an incontrovertible ter- minus ante quem for a couple of the linguistic features that define Germanic (see §2). 2 Evidence for the Germanic branch The Negau B helmet inscription (see §1) displays the sound changes of PIE *k, *gʰ and *d to h, ɣ and t, respectively, and of PIE *o to a. These features are shared by all Ger- manic languages along with several other features that all contribute to incontrovert- ibly defining these particular languages as descending from a common predecessor, Proto-Germanic. This in turn confirms the existence of a Germanic branch. In this section, we shall attempt to list the most important diagnostic features of Germanic within the realms of phonology, morphosyntax and lexicon. 2.1 Phonology As noted by Ringe (2017: 113–27, 147–50 and ch. 4 §XX), all Germanic languages dis- play reflexes of the outputs of the following phonological innovations.3 Three of these, no. 1, 4 and 5, are frequently said to constitute the most striking hallmark of the Ger- manic languages, i.e., “what to a large extent defines Germanic” (Kroonen 2013: xxvii). 1. Rask/Grimm’s Law I: PIE *p t ḱ/k kʷ > fricatives *f þ h hw unless an obstruent immediately preceded, e.g. Goth. fadar ‘father’ ~ Skt. pita ́, Gr. πατήρ; Goth. þreis ‘three’ ~ Skt. tráyaḥ, Gr. τρεῖς, Lat. trēs. 2. Verner’s Law: *f θ s x xw (some of which have arisen through no. 1) > *β ð z ɣ ɣw if not word-initial, if not adjacent to a voiceless sound, and if the last preceding syllable nucleus was not accented; e.g. Goth. fadar ‘father’ (PGmc. *faðer- < PIE *ph₂tér-) ~ Goth. broþar ‘brother’ (< PGmc. *brōþer- < PIE *bʰréh₂ter-). 3. Kluge’s Law: PIE *-Pn- -Tn- -Kn- > *-bb- -dd- -gg- (Kluge 1844; Lühr 1982; Kroonen 2011), e.g. PGmc. *rikkī- (MoG Ricke ‘female roe deer’), derived from PGmc. *rai- han- (OE rā, OHG rēho ‘roe deer’) ~ Lat. (h)ircus ‘billy-goat’, W iwrch, Bret. yourc'h ‘roebuck’ < PIE *i̯(o)rḱ- (with metathesis in Germanic). In view of PGmc. *seuni- ‘sight, vision’ (Goth. siuns, OIcel. sjón, OE sīen, OS siun) < *seɣʷni- < PIE *sekʷ-ní-, the occurrence of Kluge’s Law must have postdated no. 2. 4. Rask/Grimm’s Law II: PIE *b d ǵ/g gʷ > *p t k kw (including *bb dd gg > *pp tt kk) (succeeding no. 3), e.g. Goth. twái ‘two’ ~ Skt. dváu, Gr. δύω, Lat. duo; Goth. áukan ‘increase’ ~ Lat. augeō ‘increase’, Lith. áugu ‘grow’. 5. Rask/Grimm’s Law III: PIE *bʰ dʰ ǵʰ/gʰ gʷʰ > fricatives *β ð ɣ ɣw, e.g. OS neƀal ‘fog’, OE nifol ‘dark’ ~ Skt. nábhas- ‘fog’, Gr. νέφος; Goth. daúr ‘door’ ~ Gr. θυρᾱ, Lat. forēs. 2 Alternatively, Must (1957: 55–7) sees a Rhaetic name consisting of Venetic and Etruscan elements in this inscription. 3 Innovations no. 3 and 8 are not mentioned by Ringe (2017). However, we have included them here to demonstrate the full range of the interdependence of these phonological in- novations. The internal sequence of innovations no. 1–5 is disputed. Some adherents of the glottalic theory (e.g. Kortlandt 1991: 3) have Verner’s Law (no. 2) predate both Kluge’s Law (no. 3) and Rask/Grimm’s Law (no. 1, 4 and 5). 9. Germanic 3 6. *β ð ɣ ɣw (arisen through no. 2 and 5) > *b d g gw after homorganic nasals, and *β ð > *b d word-initially, e.g. Goth. bindan ‘to bind’. 7. Shift of stress to the first syllable of the word (succeeding no. 2). 8. Simplification of geminates after heavy syllables, e.g. PGmc. *wīsa- ‘wise’ (OIcel. víss, OHG wīs) < *wīssa- < PIE *u̯ ei̯d-to-; *deupa- ‘deep’ (Goth. diups, OIcel. djúpr, OE dēop) < *deuppa- < PIE *dʰeubʰ-no- ~ Lith. dubùs ‘deep’ < PIE *dʰubʰ-u-. As Ringe (ch. 4) also mentions, the collocation of these innovations reduces the likeli- hood of them having taken place individually in each affected language – and thus the likelihood of these languages not emanating from an immediate, common predeces- sor – to practically zero. However, the list does not confine itself to these seven inno- vations. We may add at least a handful of further innovations, most of which concern the development of the inventory of stressed vowels. Examples include: 1. Merger of post-laryngeal PIE *a o ə > a, e.g. OHG hasō ‘hare’ ~ Skt. śáśa- (< *śása-), OPru. sasins (< PIE *ḱas-); Goth. gasts ‘guest’ ~ Lat. hostis ‘enemy’ (< PIE *gʰos- tis); Goth. fadar ‘father’ ~ Skt. pita ́, Gr. πατήρ (< PIE *ph₂tér-). 2. Merger of post-laryngeal PIE *ā ō > *ā. 3. *ā > *ō (succeeding no. 10),4 e.g. Goth. sokjan /sōkjan/ ‘seek’ ~ Lat. sāgīre; Goth. bloma /blōma/ ‘flower’ ~ Lat. flōs. 4. PIE *r̥ l̥ m̥ n̥ > *ur ul um un), e.g. Goth. baúrgs /burgs/ ‘city’ ~ Av. bərəz- ‘high, hill, mountain’, OIr. brí (brig-) ‘hill’ (< PIE *bʰr̥ǵʰ-); Goth. fulls ‘full’ ~ Skt. pūrṇáḥ, Lith. pìlnas (< PIE *pl̥h₁nós). 5. Holtzmann’s Law: PIE *-i̯- -u̯ - > PGmc. *-jj- -ww- in some conditions.5 2.2 Morphosyntax Morphosyntax, too, provides a range of compelling evidence that classifies the Ger- manic languages as belonging to a separate branch. A morphological innovation that may count as one of the defining hallmarks of Germanic is the rise of its verbal system. All old Germanic languages share a verbal system that consists of three subsystems.6 • ablauting “strong verbs” with a present stem predominantly continuing the Proto- Indo-European thematic presents and a preterite stem continuing the Proto-Indo- European perfect, e.g. Goth. bind-an ‘bind’, band ‘I/he bound’, bund-um ‘we bound’ 4 Together with a few other loanword relations, the Gothic loanword rumoneis ‘Romans’ wit- nesses that innovation no. 2 is a necessary intermediary step and no. 3 must have happened after the initial acquaintance of the Germanic speaking peoples with Latin. The source word, Lat. rōmānī, has had its ō rendered as an ū (probably because innovation no. 2 caused absence of ō in the vowel system of the target language) and its ā rendered as an ō (proba- bly because the word was borrowed at a time prior to innovation no. 3) (Noreen 1894: 11– 12; Ringe 2017: 171; contested by Stifter 2009: 270–3). 5 The exact conditioning is still debated, most likely involving either adjacency to laryngeals (Hoffmann 1976: 651; Jasanoff 1978; Rasmussen 1999 [1990]) or pretonic position (Kluge 1879: 128; Kroonen 2013: xxxviii–xl); see also §3.4. 6 In addition to these three subsystems, we find some mixed verbs (e.g. PGmc. *welja- ‘will’, pret. *wa/ul-þ-; *werkja- ‘work’, pret. *wurh-t-) and a handful of irregular verbs. 4 Guus Kroonen & Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen • non-ablauting “weak verbs” with present stems of varying sources (different sources for different classes of weak verbs) and preterite stems formed with a suf- fix containing a dental consonant, most often in the form of reflexes of PGmc.
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